It's been a relieving experience, I went back to thinking only about today, what we had to do for today's show and nothing more, eventually planning tomorrow's trip, but without much stress.
No planning, no meetings, no standups, no due dates, just load/unload the van, mount the stage, check check check one-two-one-two, waiting for people to show up at the merch stand, with a glass always filled with something.
I was in charge of checking that the venues were respecting our rider, so my job ended up being counting beers and having fun with friends while having party every night.
It has also been cheaper than living in my city, everything was already paid: meals, sleeping accommodations, booze, even drugs most of the times.
Then the band I was working the most stopped for a couple of years to write the new album and I went back into programming, learnt Elixir/Erlang, and now I am consulting for different kind of companies (including banks, video games and insurance companies) to eradicate Java from this planet :)
p.s.: during this awesome times I also had the pleasure to work at an EOTM concert with Nick, their merch guy who was brutally killed in Paris at the Bataclan.
He truly was a great guy, may he rest in peace.
p.p.s.: I think I should add that I left because I had been working home for too long, I was stressed, almost burnt out, plus I was having big problems getting paid on time (if paid at all).
It's been one of the economically lowest moments of my life, I barely had enough money to buy cigarettes, but absolutely one of my greatest and funniest achievements.
It gave me the boost to rethink my life in terms of working better and do less, not more.
I was absolutely no kid anymore (I was 30 already) and still doing it from time to time, when i need to take the steam out.
This might sound like a flippant response but it's not: could you move into management? You don't need to know the finer details, but you'd have the experience required to empathise with the developers in your team.
It's not trying to comprehend 1000 little things at the same time using deep concentration, as a software developer does.
It's become really common in engineering, particularly in orgs doing agile, to split resource and functional management. I don't care for that. I spent a long time as a product owner and wondered quite often why I couldn't just absorb the resource manager's responsibilities as well, since the only thing I wasn't doing was writing reviews. Every other problem rolled up to me, since I was accountable for the outcome.
Some companies work that way, but they are bad companies to work for, IME.
Other companies, managers have got where they are because they know more than anybody else and have the personal skills to marshal a team into solving bigger problems than what is on the board for this sprint alone.
Source: ex-CTO, now Senior Engineer again, done every level of management you can think of, choose to be where I am for a reason, but do not think managers are idiots.
Call yourself an idiot if you like (I don't think I said that anywhere?) Managing is a difficult task that requires knowledge and skills. But not Engineering ones.
There's another name for when a Manager is telling his Engineers how to solve problems: micro-managing
Btw there is an interesting trend in London where individual contributors (at least in Big Data) are paid more than their managers - that's because ICs are brought in as consultants at 500+ quid a day, while companies often insist on managers being full time employees, who genrally get paid less.
At the end of the day the problems you find on the technical side only reflect in resources spent - human resources, time, budgets... beyond some level - usually the managers level and above, that's what matters and the only thing that counts.
In a lot of organizations the technical side is literally in a bubble, doing their thing and protected from the chaos of dealing with ignorants, burocracy and shit.
Bad idea. Managers need to know a different set of finer details, not none at all. While individuals on a team have to get deep into the details of what they're doing, managers need to work at the edges - where what Team X is doing integrates with V, Y and Z; and longer term, how what all of those teams are doing now fits in with the work lined up 6-24 months down the road. That's a full time job, even before we've actually done any managing of our individuals. Maybe this gives you some insight, but that's actually why (in my opinion) the first things to fall off with poor managers are 1x1s, meaningful coaching, etc.
Managers also have the stresses of accountability and expectations. There are days where I wish I was still an individual contributor.
I liked him at the time, but once I had a new manager I was blown away at everything I was missing from a more fully-qualified manager.
Now that I recognize that kind of manager - I see a lot of them. OP probably could make it as a manager - and I say that from having seen so many of these managers move up the chain. But I think other commenters are right: managers shouldn't believe they don't need to comprehend details.
Personally, if I ever get to leave IT before retirement, I plan to equip a workshop and start making electric guitars. It connects various craftsmanship skills with some engineering and art. And the best part is, end product is a instrument.
Unfortunately, this is not the best career choice where I live in (Eastern Europe). Although if you are good, you could make a living out of it. At least I would have better website then the competition :) Backup plan is to build modern/minimalistic furniture where there is no guitar orders.
Another direction would be to create a hub for amateur craftsmen. Well equipped workshop where you can rent a space to make things on your own, or take a course.
As you can see, I would pursue something related to making things as that's something I really love, and I'm doing as a hobby (IT takes a lot of time though). So, my advice would be to find something you love and see if you can make a living out of it.
Good luck!
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/we-made-it-our...
“What product could I, in my mentally addled state,
come up with making?” he wondered. That’s when he
remembered his longtime love of ice cream.You can involve computers in the process of creating work. Things like conceptual art doesn't even have to involve any artistic skill necessarily, but there are many other areas that do if you want to try it out. Paintings from unknown artist can sell for $5K and if you have the energy and space to make sculptures, they can sell for much more.
Always keep in mind who the buyers are, it isn't always directly to customers (galleries, governments, large corporations). Only make work that sells. In the process your pitch will need to be refined. It can't be simply that you want to make money, it has to speak the the audience.
There are many different customers out there looking for different things. Keep in mind there are very few people who devote themselves to this and few of these people have any sense of business, branding, marketing, or even creativity as deep as what is available in technology today. Sure many people can draw or whatever but this isn't want makes a successful artist.
Success comes from all of the same stuff that every other industry focuses on.
R.Mutt QED
Sure, but a major difference is that art is highly subjective and typically bought with arbitrary disposable income as opposed to a value-based purchasing decision. The kind of art that large corporations buy isn't what any artist actually wants to make.
I think that's exactly what they are suggesting. Make art that will sell, not art that artists want to make. Methodically approach art to appeal to a specific niche (be it corporate clients, government orgs all the way down to stay at home moms and anime fans). You could argue that at that point it isn't really "art", but that's kind of the idea. Take art out of it and sell a product to appeal to a certain market.
There are lots of meaningful and rewarding ways to participate in society, including volunteering for charitable organizations, that do not require the highest levels of skill and competitiveness.
Are you talking about some other kind of soldering, such as for stained glass or plumbing? Stained glass with real lead and real glass is pretty rare these days, much more rare than high-quality woodwork, and mainly for hobbyists. Plumbing soldering is done with a blowtorch and isn't all that difficult, but worse, copper in plumbing is being replaced by plastic which doesn't use soldering, but rather press-fit connectors. So don't count on that as a long-lived profession either (the soldering part I mean; plumbing itself will be around as long as humans have biological bodies and need to use water for cooking, hand-washing, toilets, and bathing, it'll just be easier as new technologies replace legacy ones).
Those are called "hobbyists".
>and all the alpha/beta testing happens with manually soldered hardware, since prepping a machine for just 10 boards is way too expensive
This is absolutely wrong. You can't manually place BGAs with any accuracy. I work in an R&D environment; our electronics are custom-built in-house at very low volumes, and they do use machines even for a one-off. Some parts can be fixed manually if they didn't get reflowed right, but BGAs cannot.
Even if you're doing boards with nothing smaller than SOICs, even there it's simpler and easier to just get a Kapton stencil and use solder paste, though you can of course pick-and-place with tweezers.
I'm not sure what your symptoms are but if this is a degenerative brain disease you may wish to use that time to visit family, friends, and experience new things.
I am sorry to hear that you are suffering such an illness, it definitely sucks to lose physical abilities and it takes great personal strength to get through it. I wish you all the best to still keep your intended career path, but if not I wish you all the same in finding an ideal worksite for yourself.
I don't plan to give up IT for good. Having been in the industry for 10 years, I know I must follow my heart to be happy and be a well-adjusted person.
Banking teller job is also a good option that makes decent money without having to work extremely hard all day long. Museum Tour guide is also a good one but I imagine the pay will be quite low.
I raise pigs, cows, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits and grow organic produce. It doesn't require much concentration. You might think this is a huge reach from I.T. but it still requires a lot of problem solving skills and discipline. It doesn't require the same kind of concentration, but you find out very quickly that the concentration it does take is engaging. It holds your attention because like the ocean, if you turn your back on it, it'll get you.
A lot of people's response to this has been "wow, that's my dream, but I could never do that because X, Y or Z"
3 years ago, I lived in the city, no land, no first hand experience rearing animals, could barely keep a tomato plant alive long enough to get tomatoes off it. I grew up in the country, I had some friends whose parents were farmers, my Dad had horses and we had 2 cats - that was the extent of my experience.
Anyone saying "Oh that's my dream but I could never do that because I have no land, I have no experience, I don't know where I would start." Neither did I. I found a place I could rent that had enough land to make a start that was within my means. Enough to learn how to grow fruit and vegetables and raise chickens, then by the time I ran out of room, I had a pretty good idea that I could do this and rented a place with more land. The side bonus is that the kids now have 100 acres to run around on and be kids without having to micromanage them like I did in the city, they can find themselves and grow like we used to as kids, learning their own limits and building confidence with no parents helicoptering over them making sure they don't hurt themselves - and they love it.
I also don't have to put up with the marketing bullshit that we're bombarded with about how awesome our manufactured food is, which it may be, but probably not. I know where my food comes from, from my land to my plate. I know what they've been fed, I'm happy with how they've been treated. I can see they're happy before they go to the freezer. I know my produce isn't treated with harmful pesticides and herbicides.
It's not for the feint of heart though, I knew it was going to be a lot of work going in, but I had no comprehension of the fact that it's not like a job you can put down when you're not feeling up to it. There's no "I just don't have the motivation to get out of bed today" or calling in on your depression because you just can't face the world. It's there, day in, day out, come rain, come shine, come mosquitoes, come drought, come blizzard, come flood. It's there and needs tending to. There's no days off or vacation without arranging someone to cover for you.
Animals have their own behaviour and their own way of doing things. They have their own motives and desires. They will show you very quickly that you cannot control the world around you and that all you can do is learn to harness and exploit their behaviour against them to keep things working. If you're not already, you will quickly learn to be adaptable, you will quickly learn to improvise with the things you have to hand right now, you will quickly learn to do whatever it takes or you don't have food on the table.
There are many days when I wonder what the fuck I've done and want to go running back to the safety and convenience of the city where I can be lazy without any repercussions. But when the sun comes out, the animals are behaving and happy and you've got a full harvest in front of you, you smile to yourself and you know why you did it. That's a level of satisfaction you just don't get anywhere else.
When I finally decide that programming is too much for me - which seems like a long way off yet, this side project will become my main gig. I have other ideas that will become side projects to complement this, but for the moment this is taking a fair portion of my free time and energy.
Once you get to scale then you need to start worrying about how to keep the animals watered in the dead of winter, how to extend your growing season, how to prep and store your produce over the winter months when you can't grow fresh. These all seem like tiny things when you think about them individually, but they quickly make people panic and go running for the nearest grocery store.
Shameless plug: http://www.alabasteracres.com/
Farmers have moderately high suicide rates: isolation, hard work, long hours, and the inability to just stop, as you state.
I read your account - and have read many others like it - and immediately start to think of farming more like Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea": hard work, rewarding, but there's little choice in getting on with the work.
Maybe one day. Maybe.
You don't need to be isolated nor put in long hours. But it's more work than I should perhaps have described as "a side project." If I made it my full time job and quit programming for a living, I'd probably be able to say it was only a part time job relatively quickly.
The hard work and inability to just stop are inescapable. You need to be aware of that going in. As the quote about surfing big waves from Point Break goes "You can't just call time-out and stroll on into the beach if you don't like the way things are going" much as I sometimes wish I could.
The peace of mind and living in harmony with your surroundings is good for your soul though. It definitely makes you more aware of living in the moment and having backup plans.
Solution for me was to change a lifestyle and sell myself much better. I work remotely a few hours a week.
What is this magic?! Please enlighten. I, like many IT folks, loathe sales. As such I can not sell myself out of a paper bag. Do you have any resources to help in this matter?
Others in my family do concrete, which is physically hard but they also seem to make good money. Again they own it themselves.
Hard to get jobs that compare to IT money though without being management, sinking time into school, or starting your own business.You'll probably have to try a few things out to figure out what you can actually do. I know that might be frustrating, but hang in there. You'll find something that works at some point.
If you have the ability to do so, maybe you could make some apps at home? You could pace yourself. You might have to change the way you work, using a lot of written organization, but it depends on how your mind works.
Really sorry to hear about your illness and struggles. That sounds pretty tough. Would you say that IT feels like "your calling?"
I've had friends and clients leave tech for more fulfilling, but lower wage work in cooking, farming, design, music, art, after-school work, and non-profit work.
There are a lot of good ideas on this thread, but it would be easier to speak to your situation if I had some more details.
Email me if you're up for sharing more, I'd be happy to help if I can:
darren@youshouldquityourjob.com
the answer lies inside of you, not in HN. what are your passions and interests other than IT? if its say "farming" you may not be able to go start a farm, but maybe you can go work for Home Depot in the garden center for 6 months, and start "farming on the side" (ppl do this) from there.
If I can't... depend in function of my physical condition. Repairing cars, welding, industrial agriculture, photography lab or making photos... Or simply one mill and make pieces.
If you can choose, be yourself, live, one Shabbatical year can be a good election.
I'm sorry Jerry I hope it is nothing. My best wishes.
I knew one guy that got a degree in Comp Sci and in his first job began getting severe debilitating headaches. He was diagnosed with a visual problem and was told to stop using screens in his day to day job. He quit a promising career as a software engineer and went and joined his dad's gardening business.
I once (for only a few weeks, but it felt much longer) had to use medication that made my brain feel like mush, comprehension capabilities were a fraction of normal. Very humbling experience, scared to death of losing my faculties and ending up in that fog for some reason that can't be cured so easily.
Many Software Engineers reach for Adderall or Ritalin to help them with this.
Anyway, what illness are you talking about here? Boredom? Got stuck in a place where the project sucked the life and general interest out of you? OCD? Depression? Anxiety?
UPDATE: Got good answers about what can cause these symptoms.
If you want to leave IT then try to find jobs that are still challenging your creativity, but don't need huge amount of concentration in the same time. Like becoming a carpenter, professional gardener, etc...
These still make you use your creative side, but rely on more physical work then intellectual.
My father was one and I loved the smell of wood in the workshop.
I would have loved to be a carpenter. It's one of those professions that might never go away. Even having mass production stuff, there are still people who prefer the human touch and the originality in the arts and crafts.
There are construction carpenters (framers) that work outside in the sun, rain, cold hammering dimensional lumber together to construct the skeleton of a building. It's physically demanding and chance of injury is significant.
There are finish carpenters who do the detail trim work like window and door frames, baseboard, wainscotting, etc. You work indoors but still on-site.
There are cabinet makers and furniture builders. You probably work in a fixed location/shop.
Probably a bunch of others that I haven't thought of.
I think I answered. That's what I would do, maybe it sparked a new idea in him, maybe it didn't. Maybe he can do something that can be documented and be turned into a novel by someone else. He's in a stage when he can still perform and plan ahead.
Currently driving around Africa for 2 years.
Leaving my desk was the best decision I have ever made.
details on how I did that here: http://theroadchoseme.com/work-less-to-live-your-dreams
Film and TV production is on a whole other level. Breaking down scripts for production schedule and framing everything within a budget and then talking to a lot of people where their job is to take your money and yours is to keep it. Then keeping track that everything is in order for production to take place and solving lots of last-minute crises, everything involving a lot of people. If it's a live TV type of situation or there's an oversight from larger production, stress gets amped up a lot. It's a busy hive, somewhat like an organised chaos where most of the work is handling people and being handled by people. That's production. Pre-production alone is, more or less, stress free process. That might be a direction to explore if you're art or organization oriented.
E.g. can partner support you for a bit? Do you have children? Do you have total and permanent disability insurance or temporary sickness insurance. Assets? Own an expensive home and can downsize or move to cheaper city to access equity etc. Etc.
Based on this and a target income and number of work hours I'd look for jobs that don't require much mental agility.
It depends what is meant by no concentration but most jobs require some. However something with more carpe diem like waitor, cleaner, gardening etc where you d your days work and that's it. A small fuck up usually doesn't mess your backlog etc. In these jobs.
If financially able consider doing no work but plan daily activities to keep from stagnating. E.g. long walk and salsa class every day or whatever. Or learn Haskell for an hour a day but turn off if concentration becomes an issue.
If school medicine won't help you, you should start looking for some alternate approaches, there are enough out there.
Classic example is fibromyalgia: family member of mine believed they had it and now has a formal diagnosis, but was told by multiple doctors that it wasn't a real thing and probably all in her head. Went to a chiropractor who dabbled in all sorts of stuff who ended up helping her manage it really well with some diet and lifestyle changes. Now I don't know how well those recommendations were backed up by evidence, but I was blown away at how a few months later there was a widely-advertized FDA-approved drug to treat a condition that according to at least 5 or 6 doctors in our town didn't exist (and they all suddenly recognized it and had fliers for it in their offices). It's amazing how suddenly the "evidence" came up the minute it had a marketable drug.
Maybe read up a bit about Rockefeller medicine. He also founded the American Cancer Association. I am sure he didn't do it for money.
School medicine is a trillion dollar business. You are a fool to believe that their best interest is your health. That of course does not mean that it won't help you, but it also doesn't mean that it's in your best interest (neither health wise nor cash wise) and that it has answers to all illnesses (in fact, only if it brings money, and not curing chronical illnesses brings in a lot of money).
That again does not mean that school medicine is all cash and business. There are people who take it seriously and want to help people (most doctors I naively assume). But here are equally many who don't (pharma lobby) and those are much more powerful. It is a constant battle between good & evil to your disadvantage. The least you can do is have a critical eye on what they have in store for your illness. If you blindly accept any treatment and diagnose they give you, then I am sorry for you.